4 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1999 FOOTNOTES Profile ofthe President Joe R. Feagin: Willing to Take a Stand by Hermin Vera, University ofFlorida Nikitah Imani, is an examination of what black college students and their parents in electing Joe R. Feagin, President of had to say about the experience of the American Sociological Association, our attending college at historically white membership has recognized the impor- universities. tance of committed scholarship in Ameri- For those of us who work with Joe, it is can sociology. Joe Feagin is a good hard to imagine how he manages this example of the “value free” sociologists as prodigious productivity when he also Max Weber understood this term: as those makes himself generously available to who have refused to accept the official and graduate and undergraduate students as conventional definitions of the problems well as his colleagues. He is a great they study. academic citizenwhen it comes to committee service. “He is a mentor, in the full, wonderful, meaning of this term,” Bernice McNair Barnett, Past Chair of the Race, Gender, and Class Section of the American Sociological Association told me recently, “when I went through a terribly cruel promotion and tenure process, Joe was there for me. I called him at all hours, F-mailed him, left messages on his answering machine,. .. He counseled me, gave me hope, and thanks to him I made Joe R. Feagin (right) accepts thegavel from outgoing ASA President Alejandro Portes. it. He pulled me out of despair.” Similarly, he reads and comments on an endless number of drafts of papers, research ideas, sity of Florida, was established to passion for difficult or sensitive research books and prospectuses from social recognize and showcase excellence in projects and to guide them with wisdom scientists across the country. Joe was graduate education. and respect. Joe is a strong advocate of reticent to talk about the time and energy Joe identifies the time he spent at the human and civil rights and on more than Joe R. Feagin he devotes to this mentoring when I asked Commission on Civil Rights as a scholar one occasion he has stood for the rights him about it. However, when telling me in residence in 1974-75, as a watershed of students facing the wrath of insensi- Our new president focused early on in what he was most proud about in his life event that invigorated him in the tive college administrators. Widely his career on some of the most intractable career, the first thing he mentioned was study of racism and sexism as funda- knowledgeable in sociology, he conducts social problems. Prejudice, racism, the mentoring of students and young mental social forces in the United States. his classes more as a series of questions violence, urban housing, welfare policy, colleagues. At the Commission, Joe worked with that students need to consider than as a sexism, are among the topics he has Joe was born in San Angelo, a small leading black, Latino, and white feminist series of statements they must memo- researched in the field. His thirty-six town in the middle of the Texas plains scholars and activists who educated him rize. He is as effective in the under- books and more than one hundred and where his parents, Frank Feagin and on theimportance of civil rights laws graduate classroom as he is with his forty articles represent a most original Hanna Griffin Feagin, had moved when and of protest strategies. graduate students. One of his students contribution to American sociology. Frank was lucky enough to geta job with Melvin Sikes, a former Tuskegee Air recently told me that as a student one Briefly, in Ghetto Revolts: The Politics of his new electrical engineering degree at Force trainee and now retired professor could disagree with Joe Feagin—in fact Violence in American Cities (1973), he and the height of the 1930s depression. “In at the University of Texas, told me that he encourages his students to articulate his co-author Harlan Hahn were the first those days, they explored for oil with “Joe Feagin is one of thevery few people disagreements with him—but one could to suggest an aggressively stratification! dynamite by measuring the seismic effects who truly understands others because he never forget his teaching. political interpretation of urban revolts in of theexplosions, Joe once reminisced. has both courage and conviction to Joe’s contribution to the teaching of a book-length analysis. They broke with “My father handled the equipment used search, not for facts, but for profound sociology does not end in the classroom. the tradition that either “deviantizes” in those sometimes dangerous measure- truths. He is Aristotelian in this way. He His textbook on Racial and Ethnic them or localizes them. This book was ments.” Joe and his brother and sister has not been afraid to ask those imperti- Relations, first published in 1978, and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His 1978 were raised in Houston. There they grew nent empirical questions. His sociology now in its sixth edition with co-author book, with Clairece Booher Feagin, up in the segregated “deep South” world can be characterized as one of deep Clairece Booher Feagin, is a classic and a Discrimination American Style, was one of of east Texas. Also segregated in those insights that most of our colleagues are best-selling textbook in its field. His the first social science books to congeal days was Baylor University from which afraid of.” Social Problems: A Critical Power-Conflict what we know into a substantially original Joe graduated with a BA in history and Over the last 25 years Joe has con- Perspective, first published 1982 and now and comparative analysis of racial and philosophy in 1960. At Baylor he met sulted with local and county govern- co-authored in its fifth edition with gender discrimination. Feagin’s 1983 Clairece Booher, who became his spouse, ments and universities on matters of Clairece Booher Feagin, is probably the Urban Real Estate Game was one of the first life companion, co-author, and mother of discrimination and affirmative action. only social problems textbook written by a U.S. urbanist to do a critical political- Michelle and Trevor, their two children. At Recently, the California Assembly from a neo-Marxist perspective that has economic analysis of how urban develop- the slightest provocation Joe or Clairece requested his written testimony on the survived into advanced editions. ment works. The Capitalist City: Global will “show and tell” for you acollection of subject of affirmative action. Before Joe is currently working on two Restructuring and Comnuinity Politics, edited photographs of Derek Newberry, their 3 federal courts he has appeared several projects. One researches how profoundly in 1987 with Michael P. Smith, was the and 1/3 year-old wonder grandchild. times as an expert witness on matters of racism shapes our institutions and the first major anthology to look at cities in From Baylor, Joe moved to Harvard employment discrimination, school events in our individual lives, The other, the context of the new international where Tom Pettigrew’s course on Black desegregation, and set-aside and with this writer as coauthor, proposes division of labor and the new global Americans and Gordon Allport’s lectures affirmative action programs. The the teaching and practice of a sociology economy. This edited volume helped to on the social psychology of prejudice research he did for these discrimination that would serve those people struggling re-focus the field on global issues. Modern made a definitive impression on him. A and affirmative action cases has likely for their own liberation. Sexism, co-authored with Nijole young assistant professor, Charles Tilly, helped to reduce racism in some areas of Karen Pyke, a colleague at the Benokraitis and first published in 1986 supervised his dissertation while Robert the country. An important service to our University of Florida, told me: “Joe’s makes a major contribution to empirical Bellah, Harrison White, and Talcott profession is Joe’s willingness to discuss commitment to fighting inequality and documentation of and theorizing about Parsons also influenced him. Joe’s first job his research work with many mass promoting diversity doesn’t end when gender discrimination. after his 1966 Ph.D. was as Assistant media outlets. His interviews with major he turns off the computer after a day of In the 1994 book Living with Racism, Professor at the University of California at newspapers and television programs writing. He spends great amounts of Feagin and Melvin Sikes break new Riverside, where he taught an array of have played an important role in time giving lectures around the country, ground with the analysis of more than two undergraduate courses. There he read Karl educating the broad public on matters of mentoring a wide array of students and hundred in-depth interviews with middle- Marx seriously for the first time, a work racial-ethnic conflicts and on the contri- junior faculty, and fighting local acts of class black Americans. The analysis that produced a longstanding impression bution sociology can make to them. racism and sexism. Anthony Orum, a preserves thevoices of these men and on him. He soon moved to the University Joe Feagin has been, and continues to sociologist who had an office next door women who have “arrived” in our society. of Texas at Austin, where he became be, an inspiring teacher. He has super- to Joe’s for fifteen years at the University Understanding the racial oppression they Associate and then Full Professor. There vised thirty some doctoral dissertations, of Texas, had a similar opinion:”Joe face in everyday life is critical to under- he began a close reading of sociologists several of which have been published as Feagin has a strong sense of what standing life in the contemporary United like W.